Last month, I went to Calgary’s largest shopping mall for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic hit to purchase gifts for a friend. Chinook Centre is a massive mall with multiple entrances including some through retail stores. Habitually, I chose an entrance through the Gap to enter the mall. As soon as I walked in, I noticed a gentleman wearing a mask and a headset similar to ones worn by FBI agents. He whispered: “32”. I walked through the store and straight into the mall. On the other side of the store, there was a lady with a similar outfit next to the exit. I walked past her and she whispered “31”.

We are often told as user researchers that good research starts with a solid research plan and hypotheses to validate. These plans typically start with a list of research questions; a list of behaviours that we’ll try to identify and observe. As we meet with stakeholders, product managers, designers, and clients, we narrow down what to look for in our studies. In some ways, we are deciding what we want to see before seeing anything!

Let’s go back to the mall. It took me a few minutes to realize they were keeping track of the number of customers in the store to ensure proper physical distancing. I immediately thought, couldn’t they somehow automate this? I didn’t walk into the Chinook mall to identify opportunities, nor did I go to the mall to study how businesses maintain physical distancing in their stores. But over the past few weeks, I became curious and started to notice how people have altered their lifestyle to fit the new state of the world.

I am not suggesting research planning is unnecessary or focused tactical user research is ineffective, but I believe humans live in contexts, not in isolated, controlled environments. Thus, it is crucial to try and fit non-intrusive user research methods like field visits into our toolkit more often. It is important to develop the courage to get out of our (home) offices and observe people where they are with pure curiosity. It is possible that these visits and observations do not immediately appear in reports as action items, but the value this contextual awareness brings is immense.

Why is it important?

Digital products are almost never used in isolation. Think of the last time you had to book a vacation on Expedia. Chances are you were checking your family’s calendars, communicating with the people who would travel with you to coordinate plans, replying to a friend’s text message while some Netflix show was being played and you were booking the vacation. It is very difficult to replicate such scenarios in user research. Focusing solely on tactical research questions can make us blind to other contextual data.

This problem is even more critical when working on projects in new industries, with new customer segments, cultures, or geographic locations. It is easy and convenient to generalize our own viewpoint of the world to the new product world and dive right into tactical questions like: how should the brand look? What colours should we use? What should the copywriting look like? How should we design the best checkout experience?

But that is the wrong approach. Curiosity should come first. There is so much to learn from people’s environments, the context that they live in, and how ordinary things happen in their lives, before getting fixated on product questions. We should get out of our labs more often, go where users are, and observe first hand how they carry out their most routine tasks.

Collecting contextual information in organic situations

To learn more about the full lives of individuals, we need to find ways to understand their context. Conducting contextual inquiry studies can be costly and time-consuming. However, there are still a few creative ways to capture valuable contextual information organically without breaking the bank.

1. Watch people living their day-to-day life: This is an extremely powerful way of understanding people’s culture and behaviours when entering a new market. No matter what product or service you will launch in a new market, it is important to understand how people live their everyday lives. How do they get around their cities? What types of jobs do people have? How do people make daily transactions? What are people’s hobbies? How do people greet each other?

2. Live the life of the customer: Living the life of a customer first-hand provides a great foundation for developing meaningful tactical research questions too. Imagine you are working on a project to build an e-commerce platform for an appliance store. It is relatively simple to simulate a customer’s journey over a couple of days.

• How would you figure out what type/brand of appliances you will need
• How would you conduct research to narrow down your options?
• How would you make sure your favourite appliances fit in your space
• Where would you go to see the appliances? Why?
• What questions would you ask the salesperson?
• What would happen next?

As a researcher, you should actually go over these steps and take note of your pain points and unique experiences. That allows you to develop deeper empathy with the target group and identify the specific pieces of their journey that need more exploration or optimization.

3. Job shadows: Modernizing an old-school service requires understanding how people’s problem is being solved today, even without technology. If you are building an all-digital insurance provider, you first need to understand how traditional insurance agents and brokers work. This includes how they communicate with customers, how their office is set up, what workarounds they use to overcome daily challenges and more. Coordinating with an insurance agent to simply sit alongside them for a few days and shadow their job provides valuable contextual insights into how their business and the industry as a whole work.

4. YouTube: The Covid-19 pandemic caused a few of my travel plans to get cancelled. However, during this time I was amused by the massive breadth of content on Youtube, from people who simply walk or drive in the cities around the globe. While the experience is never the same as being there in-person, these videos provide a fairly accurate presentation of how life looks like in different places. Just tune in to this video of a person driving in the streets of Tokyo and see how there are dedicated lanes for Mario Karts in the city. This is a fun, free and eye-opening experience!

Final thoughts

In its early stages, research is often about discovery which requires an open mind. Understanding a user’s context can lead you down unexpected, but valuable paths. The new state of the world, no matter how long it lasts, not only presents an opportunity to simply observe how people carry out seemingly trivial tasks under extreme conditions, but also is a great chance to nurture our curiosity and rethink our standard research processes.

✌️ Versett is a modern consulting firm helping businesses navigate the changing competitive landscape. Every month, millions of people use the platforms, apps, and tools we have built. Versett works globally and is headquartered in Calgary and Toronto. If you like this post, you’d love working with us! See where you’d fit in at versett.com

Learnings from a visit to the mall: Nurturing Curiosity in User Research was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For the duration of the month of June, we see many organizations, from local businesses to large corporations, show their support for the GSD (Gender and Sexually Diverse) community by celebrating Pride. It’s a time for rainbows, Pride flags, and pithy statements about love and acceptance. For a brief moment in the year, queer folx can feel seen and heard. Despite some companies making a greater effort to tie inclusion to their brand messaging (major kudos to Gillette this year), many still fall short in supporting GSD individuals in a meaningful way. Changing your Twitter avatar to rainbow colours is nice, but true allyship requires action. Further, if an organization is touting support for Pride in their brand messaging but isn’t taking care of their own GSD employees, this kind of support is inauthentic and insincere.

On one hand, there’s been significant progress in moving the dial on workplace discrimination policies, but on the other, we’re seeing that many GSD folx still aren’t comfortable being themselves at work. A new study released by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation, A Workplace Divided: Understanding the Climate for LGBTQ Workers Nationwide, found that 46% of GSD employees in the United States are not open about their sexuality at work for fear of being stereotyped, making people feel uncomfortable, or losing connections with coworkers. The report presents a conflicting picture: while 80% of non-GSD employees believe no one should have to hide who they are at work, 59% of non-GSD employees said they think it’s unprofessional to talk about sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace. Even when businesses attempt to provide an inclusive environment, individuals still face the interpersonal risk of bringing their full self to work.

Here’s where allies can step in. There are many ways, great and small, that straight and cis colleagues can help make work a friendlier and more supportive place for GSD individuals year-round. These are just a few:

1. Not sure about someone’s pronouns? Use “they” to be safe, or ask, when appropriate. Even better, start by offering your own when you introduce yourself.
2. Add your pronouns to your work e-mail signature to normalize disclosing pronouns.
3. Accept that you can never know someone’s gender just by looking at them.
4. Correct people when they misgender your trans or non-binary coworker, not just when the coworker is present. In fact, especially when they’re not present.
5. Correct yourself when you misgender someone.
6. Remove gendered language from job postings.
7. Understand that it takes a tremendous amount of energy for GSD individuals to explain terms, definitions, and language.
8. Make an effort to learn up-to-date terminology, and accept that you will probably get things wrong on occasion.
9. Understand that while your Millennial and Gen Z coworkers are typically comfortable using the term “queer” as a catch-all for GSD, many Boomers and older Gen X-ers still view it as a slur. When in doubt, just ask.
10. Recognize that if you have a brain, you have bias. Work to combat that bias, especially as it pertains to hiring practices.
11. Don’t minimize someone’s queerness. Though often well-intentioned, comments like, “I don’t think of you as gay — I just see you as a person” can make a significant part of a GSD person’s identity feel like a footnote, or something better left unsaid.
12. Explicitly communicate employment equity in your workplace policies. Clearly state that every team member and job applicant has a right to equal treatment with respect to employment without regard to sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
13. Outline clear anti-discrimination and harassment policies that protect GSD employees from homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia.
14. Speak up when you hear exclusionary, derogatory, or inappropriate comments. Staying silent makes you complicit.
15. Instead of Hey guys, refer to a group of people as team, folks, everyone, y’all, etc.
16. Challenge gendered dress codes.
17. When getting to know coworkers in social settings, be conscious of heteronormative assumptions. Instead of asking a woman, “Do you have a husband?”, ask her, “Do you have a partner?”.
18. Don’t hide any relations you have to someone in the GSD community, such as friends or family members. Talking about your gay brother or transgender cousin the same way that you talk about any family member or friend shows that you value people equally regardless of their identities.
19. Trust GSD folx. When they teach you something, don’t feel the need to go and check for yourself.
20. Understand that one GSD individual doesn’t represent the whole group and is not a stand-in for the entire GSD community. Each person’s experience is unique and generalizations should not be made.
21. Recognize that mainstream media portrayals of GSD people are often exaggerated. Don’t expect your GSD coworkers to be as funny as Neil Patrick Harris or as charming as Laverne Cox.
22. How much of what you are watching/reading/listening to was made by GSD individuals? Balance your bookcase, your Twitter feed, your podcast subscriptions.
23. Share writing by GSD authors.
24. Speak less in meetings today to make space for your GSD colleagues to share their thoughts. If you’re leading the meeting, make sure they are being heard as much as straight, cisgender team members (particularly straight, cis men).
25. If you know a GSD person has been waiting to speak but you’re called on first, cede your time to them.
26. Promote high-performing GSD individuals. Their leadership styles may be different than yours — that might be a good thing!
27. Talk to the manager of a GSD colleague who is doing good work and let their direct supervisor know.
28. If you work in a large organization, encourage and support the formation of a GSD network or resource group so that GSD employees have visible role models and peers.
29. If your colleague attempts to divide the team up by gender for a game, project, etc., ask that they reconsider.
30. Ask for gender-inclusive bathrooms.
31. If multi-stall, single-gender bathrooms are the only option, don’t question which one your trans or non-binary coworker uses.
32. If you see someone whose gender expression confuses you in a bathroom, don’t stare. Just mind your own business. It is a bathroom, after all.
33. If you’re in a management position, make sure the paperwork at your company has third gender markers.
34. In Canada, gender affirmation procedures are covered by provincial healthcare plans. If your company is based in the United States, work to provide your employees with transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage.
35. Do not be overbearing and bombard GSD coworkers with your knowledge of queer theory — just be an advocate for their rights in the workplace.
36. Respect your GSD coworker’s right to privacy. Even if they disclose personal information about their gender identity/gender expression/sexual orientation/etc to you, it doesn’t mean they want everyone else to know.
37. In fact, your GSD coworker doesn’t have to come out to anyone at work at all.
38. Recognize that your bisexual coworker may experience the double bind of never fully feeling accepted by either the GSD community or heteronormative culture.
39. If your workplace celebrates Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, be sure to celebrate non-binary parents as well. Some may celebrate these days while others may feel totally uncomfortable and erased. Check in with your non-binary parent coworker to see what feels best for them.
40. Understand that you may face backlash for being a GSD ally.
41. When a GSD employee leaves your workplace, ask yourself: Did I do everything I could to support them in their role? Or am I part of the reason they’re leaving?
42. Don’t expect the GSD people in your life to explain everything about GSD personhood, rights, and issues to you. Do your own research first.
43. Let your GSD colleagues know that you support them. Explicitly. Regularly. Without expectation.
44. Show up for your GSD coworkers. Participate in community events, volunteer, donate.
45. If you find yourself getting frustrated or upset when someone points out a gaffe or blind spot of yours, step back to listen and self-reflect. If you still don’t understand where they’re coming from, self-educate: read GSD literature, queer theory, or essays and articles about other GSD people’s experiences.
46. Further, take the initiative to look up the questions you have rather than asking for the emotional education and labor of a GSD person.
47. Poet and novelist Audre Lorde once said, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” GSD people are Black, Brown, Indigenous, people of color, sex workers, undocumented, immigrants, disabled, poor, incarcerated, elderly, and a number of other marginalized identities. Understand that GSD people come from all backgrounds and life experiences.
48. Don’t assume that this list doesn’t apply to you, a well-intentioned (perhaps even woke) person. Be thoughtful: think about what position of privilege you occupy in the world and how that might make life more difficult for GSD folx every day.
49. Accept that there will always be more to learn.
50. Don’t expect praise for being an ally. Respect for others is a minimum pre-requisite for being human.

(Credit to VICE for these incredibly helpful guides that inspired this list.)

Do you identify as GSD? How have straight, cis colleagues helped make your experience at work more positive? Anything missing from this list? Leave a comment below!

✌️ Versett is a product design and engineering consultancy. If you like this post, you’d love working with us. See where you’d fit in at versett.com

Pride at Work: 50 Ways You Can Show Up as an Ally was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to create practical Design Principles to build alignment and purpose within your team.

Why Design Principles, and why now?

Over the past few years, our design team at Versett has grown a great deal. Along with that growth, the types of products and projects we’re working on have increased in complexity and variety. We’ve also moved from a design team under one roof to one distributed across multiple locations and timezones.

As a result of this growth and change, it became evident that we needed to find a means to rally around a common vision and definition of what great design is. Creating a shared framework of principles made sense as the perfect way for us to push our design practice forward, and also provide a cohesive set ideals for all designers to strive for. We wanted to have a shared foundation from which all design problems could be approached, irrespective of product or industry.

Who has done it well?

Before diving in, we researched how other companies had approached defining their principles. One of the most helpful resources we came across was Julie Zhou’s post “A Matter of Principle” — a must-read for any team or designer thinking about developing design principles. The subhead of her article, “Surfacing core truths in every design”, really resonated with us and provided a guiding perspective.

Additionally, Design Principles FTW was an amazing resource, as it’s an aggregate of design principles from a large number of organizations. We found this helpful because it allowed us to identify organizations that resembled our own. One really powerful thing that immediately jumped out was that no two sets of principles were identical. The nuances in each painted a unique picture of the company, their culture, and the products they build.

Our Process

Once we had a more robust understanding of how other companies had determined their principles, we created a process that would allow our team to contribute to developing our own, cross-office.

1. Our design team read A Matter of Principle by Julie Zhou
2. Each designer was asked to compile their personal design values or philosophies.
3. We gathered our entire design team on a Zoom call to share and discuss our individual lists.
4. We captured everyones lists in a shared document, and started grouping them by common themes.
5. The resulting list was then refined and presented back to the team for final review.
6. We then shared the final design principles with the broader organization at our weekly all-hands.

To get everyone thinking about how they currently use a value system in their own work, we started by providing a small homework assignment. Next, readings were shared to illustrate what design principles are and how they should function. Each designer was asked to bring a list of their values or principles from their own processes. Each team member’s list was shared and reviewed at our weekly design team meeting. Everyone’s contributions were captured in a Freehand that we screen-shared. As similar themes began to surface, we discussed them and created clusters of related ideas. Then, each thematic cluster was given a title that encompassed its intention.

Given that not all aspects of design are equally important, we thoroughly vetted each of these main themes and started prioritizing. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs served as a guide to help prioritize our preliminary list of principles. With the collective input and thinking of the team, we further refined the list and edited the principles to be more succinct. The final set was presented back to the group for review before sharing with the broader organization.

Our Principles

The resulting list is a cohesive and actionable set of principles that provides a shared understanding of what makes great design. In addition, the principles serve as a tool for reviewing designs and identifying opportunities to continually improve our output.

Human

We focus on creating solutions that thoroughly consider the people whom they are meant to serve. We are intentional about how we work together to create those solutions. We validate the success of a design through research and testing. Human-centered designs are accessible, empathetic, ethical, helpful, simple, and friendly.

Responsible

We design products that are ethical and in pursuit of improving the lives and experiences of the people who use them and the communities in which they are used. The idea or design is technologically feasible, economically viable, and morally sound.

Flexible

We take a macro view of the project to ensure that our product or design will be able to change and adapt as needed. We consider how and if a product should evolve in step with industry or consumer evolution. We use modular and component-based practices to allow our products to be built, optimized, and adapted more rapidly.

Methodical

We continuously evaluate and iterate on our processes, allowing us to improve and optimize these systems and their results. We deliver high-quality work efficiently and with intention.

Aesthetic

We create remarkable, expressive designs, without sacrificing simplicity or focus. Our designs are appropriate within their respective contexts and fit the brands and ecosystems in which they live. We design products that speak to and emotionally connect with users through the appropriate use of visual communication.

Designing Beyond the Horizon

As an organization, one of our core missions is to create a culture of learning and growth. To do so, we develop and implement frameworks that allow designers and non-designers of varied skill levels to easily come on board, acclimate, and elevate their skills. Regardless of their starting point, Versett’s goal is to provide the tools for each team member to do the best work of their careers. By codifying our Design Principles and establishing a shared viewpoint on design, we’ve put a stake in the ground. From here we can optimize for greater outcomes, working towards a shared vision and common goals.

Sharing the principles with the broader team beyond the design discipline proved extremely valuable in affirming that our direction and values were aligned with the organization as a whole. As a studio focused on delivering digital products for our clients and partners, design and product thinking are intrinsic to all practice areas at Versett. Sharing our design philosophies helped to further integrate design into our approach to product development.

Resources

Below are some of the resources we found helpful in developing our principles. We hope you’ll find them helpful, too.

A Matter of Principle

by Julie Zhou

Julie Zhou on the Inside Intercom Podcast

Julie Zhuo chats with Intercom…about what makes great product design, establishing early design principles, team building, and much more.

Design Principles FTW

The most comprehensive collection of Design Principles on the Internet.

Principles of Product Design

DesignBetter by InVision

Material Design

Google’s Material Design system is built on top of some foundational core principles which drive all aspects of it.

Does your organization have a defined set of guiding design principles? How did you work to develop them? How has codifying your design principles influenced how you work? Leave a comment below!

✌️ Versett is a product design and engineering consultancy. If you like this post, you’d love working with us. See where you’d fit in at versett.com

Driving Unity and Purpose in Remote Teams was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Versett, our team is built on the philosophy of “Learn Better, Faster”. As part of our continuous effort to enhance how we work on projects, one of the concepts that we have been developing is ‘Product Thinking’. This has become somewhat of a buzzword in tech. But there doesn’t seem to be a shared, global definition of what Product Thinking is, so we tried to clearly define what it means. I’ll go over our internal definition, the ways we have incorporated product thinking into our working model, and a few strategies for educating both internal and external teams on the value of it.

What exactly is Product Thinking?

Product thinking is an overarching term that we use to describe product-defining activities. This requires taking a multi-level view of a problem. You need to consider the holistic nature of products while consistently reminding yourself of the “Why?”.

When deep into execution, it’s often challenging to remind ourselves why we are on our current path and whether we are still doing the right thing. So it is helpful to ask questions like:

• Is this decision going to make the product better for the user?
• Do people really need this feature?
• How will people find out about this product?
• Why is this product better than what already exists?

Product thinking requires taking a multi-level view of a problem, and consistently reminding yourself of the “why”.

Product Thinking is a team sport

It requires commitment, dedication, and involvement from all members of the team. Each team member should take full ownership of the product they are working on. At Versett, our team is organized into three high-level disciplines: Product, Design and Engineering. Product thinking impacts each of these disciplines in different ways.

• Product managers should think about what’s best for the product as a whole, not just the project.
• Engineers should think about how they will measure the usage and success of each feature they develop.
• Designers should think about how a user will find and interact with a feature they are designing.

Particularly, we adopted a few strategies to build our product thinking muscles:

• We take a multidisciplinary approach to building products. We always try to incorporate thinking from other domains. We don’t always need to reinvent the wheel — the answers might already be out there.
• We work iteratively and try to fix things based on feedback, data, and analytics. We constantly ask ourselves, “What’s an experiment that will move us in the right direction?”. We constantly measure our progress, either through analytics or user research, and then pivot our efforts based on findings.
• We consider the business and user points of view simultaneously by having a strategic lens and considering both perspectives to answer: Why are we building this product? Are we solving the right problem? Are we solving it for the right people?

It’s a journey, not a destination

Effectively implementing product thinking initiatives requires support, commitment, and a shared understanding with regards to its definition, benefits, and strategies. Listening to a presentation or reading this article will not make anyone a product thinker. At Versett, we encourage and empower our team members to just keep practicing. We constantly remind and challenge one another. We are all still learning and continuously improving, but we put together a few strategies that we have found helpful.

• We ran our entire team through an “Intro to Product Thinking” workshop, collected their feedback and incorporated them into our definition to make sure everybody across the board is on the same page when talking about product thinking.
• We included this introduction in our onboarding resources for new hires.
• In the future, we plan to include the same material in our client onboarding resources too, to help build a shared vocabulary and way of thinking.
• We communicate and share knowledge regularly. The key to a successful product thinking initiative is being open about it across the organization. We talk about it during our weekly meetings and we share related resources with the broader team.

Do you practice product thinking in your organization? Have you used any other strategies to integrate product thinking into your working model? We would love to have a conversation and learn more. Leave a comment below!

✌️ Versett is a product design and engineering consultancy. If you like this post, you’d love working with us. See where you’d fit in at https://versett.com/

Building a Product Thinking Organization was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How does your company support Diversity & Inclusion initiatives? What do you actively do in your work or personal life to be a good ally? We’d love to hear from you on Twitter, or you can email us.

✌️ Versett exists to inspire and enable organizations to build and operate digital products. If you like this post, you’d love working with us. See where you’d fit in at https://versett.com/

Diversity & Inclusion is not a trend was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the primary barriers to entry is simply people hiring other people who are like them. In a recent interview with Harvard Business Review, Girls Who Code founder, Reshma Saujani, commented on this issue, stating, “Nobody gives up power and that’s really ultimately what we are talking about right now. Letting women and people of colour through the gates, that’s giving up power.”

Further contributing to the issue of underrepresentation is the fact that young women are not entering the study of STEM at the same rate as young men. Young men with lower marks in high school were more likely to choose a STEM program than young women with higher marks. In fact, young women with higher mathematics marks in high school (at least 90% in grade 9 or 10) were less likely to opt for a STEM university program than men with marks in the 80% to 89% range. Bearing that, we know that a lack of interest in these fields is not due to a matter of ability.

Studies have indicated that girls become interested in tech careers at age 11, but lose interest soon after. Experts point to a lack of female mentors as a factor responsible for this trend; however, the underlying issue is perhaps one that is far more insidious and therefore much more challenging to solve: we raise boys to be brave, and girls to be perfect.

From a very young age, girls receive a litany of messages that they are either too much or not enough: too loud, too quiet, too bossy, too mousey, too fat, too thin… The pressure to meet unrealistic standards of how a girl “should be” is unrelenting and encourages girls to strive for something wholly unattainable, which is perfection.

Perfectionism can be driven by socially prescribed expectations as well as self-oriented expectations. According to a new study called “Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time”, it is a mix of excessively high personal standards (“I have to excel at everything I do”) and intense self-criticism (“I’m a complete failure if I fall short”). Peer pressure, academic pressure, comparisons to siblings and friends, highly critical parents, teachers, and coaches, and messages about success, achievement, and failure all contribute to the trap of perfectionism. This tendency to try to be perfect affects mental health, physical health, and social functioning, which can lead to depression, anxiety, and emotional dysregulation, eating disorders and body image issues, high blood pressure, social isolation, and even suicide.

Author and shame researcher, Brené Brown, describes perfectionism as armour that protects us from blame, judgment, and shame. “Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best,” Brown explains. “Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it’s a shield.” When girls start believing they have to be perfect, they stop taking risks, hiding behind this shield. Perfectionism leads individuals to view their abilities as fixed: an all-or-nothing belief that they are either good at something, or they’re bad at something. This becomes especially damaging for young girls when subjects like math and science are not immediately understood with ease. Rather than seeing challenges and mistakes as learning opportunities, girls are more likely to assume, “I’m not good at this” or “I’m not smart”.

In her book, Mindset, Stanford University research psychologist Carol Dweck describes a fixed mindset as the belief that one’s abilities are carved in stone, wherein everything is about the outcome, “if you fail — or if you’re not the best — it’s all been wasted.” In other words, all-or-nothing thinking and perfectionism. Conversely, the growth mindset “allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of outcome,” and centers on the belief that intelligence is malleable and can be grown and nurtured through practice. This mindset encourages learning and development through trial and error, which, incidentally, is the very basis of scientific discovery.

So how do we raise our girls to develop a growth mindset?

It starts with how we speak to girls as parents, family, educators, and members of the community. Here are three ways that we can collectively work to encourage perseverance and resilience to gain competence and confidence — perhaps our greatest chance at building future generations of successful women in tech.

Focus on effort, not outcome
Struggle is a key part of learning. In his book, Making It Stick, author Peter C. Brown explains that “learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful. Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.” One of the most effective ways of encouraging girls to overcome the fear of struggle (and the fear of failure), is to positively reinforce hard work rather than achievement. Moreover, research has shown that language matters for all children. Praising a child for “being so smart” actually has adverse effects on performance, reinforcing the fixed mindset belief that abilities are innate and inborn, whereas praising a child for “working really hard” fosters the growth mindset and supports greater feelings of success and fulfillment.

Make your home a shame-free zone
As much as we’d like, we cannot control all the messages girls receive at school, online, and from society as a whole. However, we can control what goes on at home. Teaching girls that they are not defined by their mistakes is best achieved by being mindful of how we react to their struggles, as well as how we react to our own. Showing vulnerability is an act of courage that works to dismantle the armour of perfectionism. When girls can feel free of judgment and criticism when they make mistakes, they are more likely to see challenges as learning opportunities. And, since children are astutely perceptive of adult behaviour, it’s all the more important to model that vulnerability and lead by example. In Brené Brown’s words, “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.”

Help girls to problem solve
Lastly, it’s our responsibility to provide girls the building blocks with which to tackle hard problems. Teaching girls to break challenges down into smaller, more manageable components helps build confidence and gives them ownership over the problem. When girls are brave enough to explore solutions and test assumptions, they build resilience. Though personality traits are not immutable, they are established early in life and are difficult to change. In a report on strategies for the next generation of female executives conducted by Korn Ferry Institute, perseverance, resilience, risk-taking, personal fortitude, and courage were listed as common traits among the female CEOs studied. Providing supportive environments where girls can develop these inclinations and aptitudes through problem-solving is key to building a solid foundation for future growth. Knowing they have the tools to take on increasingly more difficult problems is incredibly empowering. And when girls feel empowered, well… nothing seems out of reach anymore.

While women continue to work hard for equitable pay, representation parity, and more inclusive work environments, let’s not forget to invest in our young girls. Here’s to our future Lovelaces, Hoppers, scientists, developers, coders, and engineers. May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them.

How are you celebrating Women’s History Month? What does International Women’s Day mean to you? We’d love to hear from you on Twitter, or you can email us.

✌️ Versett exists to inspire and enable organizations to build and operate digital products. If you like this post, you’d love working with us. See where you’d fit in at https://versett.com/

Narrowing the gender gap in tech starts with how we raise our girls was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

View the results of our 2018 Report here.

Last year, we published our first annual Diversity & Inclusion Report, stating our commitment to making intentional choices to ensure that we are an open and inclusive workplace. We are thrilled at the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received and we feel incredibly encouraged to continue the work we’re doing in this arena. Over the last year, we’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons — sometimes learning the hard way — that have and will continue to inform our decisions moving forward. We hope that our transparency in setting targets, publishing annual reports, and sharing our research will effect change both internally and within the industry at large.

In the spirit of radical candor, something we’ve embraced at Versett, we’ve decided to share where we succeeded in our D&I efforts, but perhaps more importantly, also where we came up short.

One of our first steps was to update our recruitment strategies. One major initiative was to be more intentional about how we write our job postings so that we are attracting the best talent from the largest possible pool. Over the past year, we’ve removed all gendered language and gendered pronoun usage from our postings.

Studies have shown that female and non-male identifying applicants are less likely to apply for positions that use heavily masculine language in their job postings. As such, we’ve avoided using masculine-themed words like independent, competitive, assertive or achievement-oriented, and instead use words like collaboration, empathy, understanding, and communication. Additionally, women and non-binary folx are less likely to apply for roles where they don’t meet all or most of the job requirements, whereas men will apply even if they meet only half of the listed requirements. Rather than displaying a laundry list of required capabilities, we focus on informing prospective candidates of their expected responsibilities. Similarly, instead of requiring proficiency in an exhaustive list of programs and applications, we simply disclose the tools and technologies we use. These strategies and others have helped tremendously in attracting more diverse talent from a wider pool.

Recently, we also started to include a set of D&I-specific questions as part of our interviewing process. In the past, we have admittedly been both heavy-handed and too casual with our approach. First, asking a candidate if they harbour negative feelings toward people different from themselves is not likely to produce an honest response. No one wants to openly admit to their biases if they even recognize that they have biases at all.

Secondly, hiring someone who seems like a “nice person” is not enough. “Nice” people can still be bigoted and can harm team members who represent marginalized identities, even in an inclusive environment.
To help gauge a candidate’s openness to Diversity & Inclusion, we’ve put together the following set of interview questions:

• Have you read our D&I report?
• What do diversity and inclusion mean to you?
• What do you see as the most beneficial aspect of diversity and inclusion to the company and to your work?
• What do you see as the most challenging aspects of working in a diverse environment?
• Describe what kinds of experiences you have had interacting with others who have different backgrounds than your own.
• What kind of awareness or knowledge did you gain from these experiences?
• How have you handled a situation when a colleague was unreceptive to the diversity of others?
• We occasionally run workshops and publish articles on D&I. What would you hope to learn from this kind of knowledge sharing?

These questions are deliberately open-ended to help generate thoughtful responses. In our experience, we’ve never had to run through the entire list of questions in a single interview. It becomes evident quite quickly whether or not the candidate will be a good fit for our team. We say we’re looking for openness to D&I because we don’t expect everyone to come to the table with all the answers. When it comes to D&I, you don’t know what you don’t know. What’s important to us is an unwavering respect for others and a willingness to learn.

Despite our efforts, however, we still do not have equitable gender, race/ethnicity, or GSD (Gender & Sexual Diversity) representation at Versett. Though we did improve slightly in some areas since last year, we have yet to meet our targets.

To be truly representative of the communities where we work and the populations we serve, our Calgary office should aim for 33.7% visible minority representation, 51.4% in Toronto, and 56.9% in New York. Company-wide, 48.5% of our team is non-White (up from 32% in 2017); however; in the spirit of complete transparency, we feel it’s important to break that number down a little bit. In addition to our teams in North America, we also employ a number of remote workers who, incidentally, are not White. This skews our ethno-racial diversity numbers in a way that does not accurately reflect the representation in Calgary, Toronto, and New York. In fact, we’ve identified a huge gap in our New York office where currently all of our team members are White. By posting our job listings in places with greater diversity, such as career sites for institutions with more diverse populations, as well as incubators and bootcamps for specific groups such as Women in Code, we hope to sign on more high-performing employees who can bring their unique perspectives and valuable contributions to our team.

Cross-office, we are aiming for a target just north of 50% combined female and non-male identifying representation, based on 50.4% female population in Canada reported in 2016 Census results, and 50.6% in the United States reported in 2018. Currently, only 24.2% of Versett employees are female or non-binary identifying (down from 27% in 2017). Despite the downturn in overall non-male representation, where we made one of our most significant improvements was in the promotion of our first female employee to Versett’s leadership team. Prior to this, the leadership team had been exclusively male. In our 2017 report, we committed to developing advancement and hiring strategies and working to define clear paths to leadership that prioritize diverse representation and gender parity. We’ve made some improvements, but we recognize that there is still much opportunity for growth. For women, and particularly women of colour, seeing yourself represented in leadership positions is crucial for career advancement. The saying “you can’t be it if you don’t see it” rings very true.

Though we now have female representation on our leadership team, which is a tremendous step in the right direction that we are very proud of, there unfortunately comes the issue of becoming an “Only” — the isolating experience of being the only woman in the room. McKinsey & Company’s Women in the Workplace study reports that Onlys experience a tokenism dynamic, where women aren’t seen as the individuals that they are; instead, they are seen as a representative for all women. One of the consequences of this is that one woman in a group of men physically stands out, thus drawing a larger share of the attention. Under this heightened visibility, her performance is more likely to become scrutinized. Everything an Only says and does can be put under a microscope, and while she is just an individual person, her individual success or failure can become representative of all women. An Only’s success or performance becomes a litmus test for what women as a group are capable of, which raises the stakes on any kind of interaction or contribution.

Another dynamic that occurs is that Onlyness can lead to greater stereotyping. When there is a group and several team members are women, the variation among those women helps to counter generalizations; however, when there is only one woman, she becomes a stand-in for all women. This primes gender stereotypes and there is greater pressure to conform to traditional feminine expectations. As an Only, she is more likely to receive pushback if she steps outside of those gender lines.

To counter this, and other identity-based experiences of Onlyness, we encourage our team to be good allies, especially in front of our clients. Being a truly inclusive workplace means making sure that folks aren’t just given a seat at the table — they are given a voice. When a female director gets mistaken for a junior-level contributor, it’s up to her male allies to speak up and make that correction. Good allyship also means passing the microphone. If a team member of a marginalized group is repeatedly interrupted or talked over in meetings, it’s the responsibility of their peers to make a distinct point of offering them the spotlight and making sure their contributions are respected.

GSD (Gender & Sexual Diversity) representation is, unfortunately, more difficult to benchmark. Due to persisting stigma and discrimination, many people who identify under the GSD umbrella choose not to disclose their true identities. Statistics Canada estimates that roughly 3% of the population identifies as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, but has yet to provide an option for individuals who do not identify with those labels, and it is widely suggested that this number is far too low. A Gallup poll from 2016 suggests the number is at 4.1% in the United States. However, GSD advocacy and ally groups place this estimate at closer to 10% of the population and in thriving tech-centric cities, these populations are greater than the national average. As such, our company-wide target for GSD representation is above 4%. Currently, 3% of Versett employees identify as GSD (down from 5% in 2017).

As a result of the survey we sent out this year (you can view our survey questions here), we identified the need for more robust D&I onboarding education for new hires. Our team has doubled since the release of our 2017 report, and our new hires come from very diverse backgrounds. Generally speaking, there seems to be a common ground of knowledge in terms of our D&I efforts and targets; however, it became apparent that we were not doing our due diligence when it came to communicating those efforts to our new hires.

Diversity & Inclusion has become the organizational buzzword of late, partly due to the rise of social activism (and a growing interest for doing what’s right), partly due to well-researched ROI (and the perennial interest in doing what’s profitable). Be that as it may, D&I initiatives seem to be a largely Canadian and American phenomenon. Perhaps this can be attributed to our respective colonial histories* and the longstanding racism and White supremacy that is so interwoven in the fabric of our cultures. Perhaps it’s the very nature of our multiculturalism that encourages discussion about and celebration of what makes us different. Perhaps it’s the acknowledgment that marginalized groups face greater barriers when advocating for equity and that folks who face less discrimination have a responsibility to use their privilege to advocate on their behalf. Perhaps it’s simply White guilt. Nevertheless, race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and other factors of power and oppression are not as openly discussed in many other cultures.

Despite D&I surveying and reporting becoming common practice among many companies, when asked to fill out the survey, several of our employees felt “culture shocked”. This was an immediate red flag that we had failed to communicate what Diversity & Inclusion means for us at Versett. While understanding the benefits of a more diverse and inclusive workplace, some of our team members didn’t understand why we were asking such forward questions. Interestingly, the issue wasn’t about disclosing personal information; it was about what we were using that data for. Why label people? Why put them into boxes? Don’t we hire and recognize people based on the merit of their qualifications and hard work?

Our D&I surveys are certainly not intended to be reductive. We recognize that humans are tremendously layered and complex and are greater than the sum of their identities. Unfortunately, discounting people’s diverse identities is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the idea that folks don’t see colour/gender/religion/age/etc and treat everyone based on the content of their character and the merits of their professional qualities is likely what minority groups hope to be true. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if it were? On the other, this same identity-blindness is what many individuals use to mask their bigotry. Purposely disregarding identity-based differences denies marginalized folks of their lived experiences and the very real discrimination and disenfranchisement they face. This is an insidiously damaging form of microaggression called gaslighting that involves telling (and/or convincing) an individual that what they are experiencing isn’t real, or isn’t as bad as they imagine. We hope that by recognizing and acknowledging our differences at Versett, we let our employees know that they are seen and heard.

To help better communicate why we care about Diversity & Inclusion at Versett, we’ve since put together a more robust D&I onboarding framework for new hires. This includes a high-level discussion on power and oppression, a primer on identities and intersectionality, cultural and historical context for folks who are not Canadian or American, an overview of the work we’ve done to date, and how all of this aligns with our company values. As our team becomes more diverse, we are actively trying to incorporate experiences and ideas from other perspectives as we enrich our D&I initiatives. The process of educating others is a learning experience for us as well.

We are very proud to highlight that as a direct result of our 2017 report, we have hired a number of individuals who noted that the reason they applied to Versett was that of the report and Versett’s commitment to a safe and inclusive workplace. That being said, perhaps our greatest shortcoming has been in the implementation of policies that directly support the safety and inclusion that we’ve promised.

It is well-established in D&I literature and research that a diverse and inclusive workplace is only as strong and meaningful as the comprehensive and clearly outlined employee protections that support it. Without explicit policies in place, a workplace may appear more diverse and perhaps inclusive at a surface level, but may still present many sources of difficulties, conflicts, disadvantages, and discomfort for employees from marginalized groups. Versett has been incredibly lucky that, up until this point, we have experienced limited identity-based conflict in the workplace. This is perhaps a testament to our rigorous screening and hiring process (and, as a result, the wonderful group of people we have on our team); however, it is irresponsible to continue riding on that luck.

Organizational culture is created, influenced, and preserved by the behaviour that leadership rewards and punishes. Without a clear set of guidelines and expectations outlining what is and what isn’t acceptable behaviour, we were not being proactive about making Versett a truly safe and inclusive place to work. Using an ad hoc approach to HR worked when there were only 9 of us, sitting in the same small office, where we appreciated each other’s humour, where nothing could be taken out of context, and where mutual respect was unspoken but always understood. Now that we are a team nearing 40 (and growing), spread across three offices in three countries, we can no longer afford to play fast and loose.

This year we made a very important commitment to protecting our employees by hiring dedicated Human Resources personnel. We are in the process of putting together a comprehensive People & Culture Employee Handbook (which includes, and is not limited to, a clearly outlined code of conduct, a process for reporting violations of the code of conduct, procedures for conflict resolution and disciplinary action, and other widely-established protective policies), with a standardized compensation structure to ensure pay equity, and better documentation for employee evaluation and professional development in the pipeline. We look forward to empowering all of our current and future employees with this renewed commitment to safety and inclusion.

Versett is still a young company, but we’ve matured a lot in the last year. As our team continues to grow, it is a top priority for our company to double down on its commitment to diversity and inclusion. Since publishing our first report last year, we’ve celebrated a lot of progress, but more importantly, we’ve identified key opportunities for improvement. We welcome the challenges ahead of us and hope that our transparency inspires other organizations not to congratulate themselves too much for their D&I efforts, but instead face the shortcomings of their ethical responsibilities head-on.



* We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta, which includes the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprising the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (including the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley First Nations). The City of Calgary is also home to Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III. We would also like to note that the Versett Calgary office is situated on land adjacent to where the Bow River meets the Elbow River, and that the traditional Blackfoot name of this place is “Moh’kins’tsis”, which we now call the City of Calgary.

We acknowledge the land the Versett Toronto office is on is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse Indigenous, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.

We further acknowledge that the Versett New York office is located on the unceded land of the Lenape. We acknowledge the Lenape community, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations.

Does your company report on Diversity & Inclusion? What successes or challenges have you faced in your D&I efforts? We’d love to hear from you on Twitter, or you can email us.

✌️ Versett exists to inspire and enable organizations to build and operate digital products. If you like this post, you’d love working with us. See where you’d fit in at https://versett.com/

What We Learned from Our 2018 Diversity & Inclusion Report was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Why is it important for companies to care about employees’ mental health? It would be like growing a vegetable garden and then asking why it’s important to provide water and adequate sunlight.”

– Business psychologist and psychotherapist Douglas Labier, Ph.D

Team,

Today is Bell Let’s Talk Day in Canada, a day for raising awareness around mental health and for fighting to end the stigma around mental illness.

Mental health is key to your overall well-being. You can’t be truly healthy without it. Your mental health affects every aspect of your life — how you move through the world, how you think and act, and how you affect the people around you. Mental health is more than just the absence of mental illness; it’s about realizing your potential, coping with the normal stresses of life, and making contributions to your community.

It may be more helpful to think of good mental health as thriving. Good mental health isn’t about avoiding problems or trying to achieve a ‘perfect’ life. It’s about living well and feeling capable despite challenges. Contrary to popular misconceptions, people who live with a mental illness can and do thrive, just as people without a mental illness may experience poor mental health.

So what does good mental health look like?

It’s the ability to enjoy life
Living in the moment and appreciating the “now”.
Accepting that some things can’t be predicted or changed.
Acknowledging life’s challenges, but working to prevent them from overshadowing feelings of happiness.

It’s resilience
The ability to lead a normal life despite being under stress.
Believing that you can learn from difficult times.
Seeking your support network when things get tough.

It’s balance
Making time for things that give you pleasure.
Prioritizing friends and family.
Engaging in self-care.

It’s self-actualization
Knowing what your strengths are and working to develop them.
Working on self-esteem and self-compassion.
Feeling as though you are reaching your potential.

It’s flexibility
The ability to accept things the way they are, even if you don’t like them.
Coping well with change.
The ability to let go of or loosen rigid expectations and opinions.

The quality of your mental health is directly connected to your level of happiness day-to-day, which inevitably spills into the workplace. That’s why Versett strives to support our people in bringing their best selves to work. Supporting each other holistically is what helps us succeed. We know from experience that happy, fulfilled individuals form motivated, high-performing teams.

While we can’t control all of the sources of stress that crop up in your daily life, we can work to provide an inclusive environment that celebrates our differences and actively fights against discrimination and the persisting stigma around mental illness.

One of the ways we can work together to normalize mental illness is to open up the conversation about mental health and show up for members of our team who may be struggling.

Offer support
Too often, we place the responsibility of the individual struggling with mental illness to reach out for help. This can be incredibly daunting, especially when there is still so much stigma. If you think someone might be having a tough time, ask them what you can do to help.

Learn and listen
Being a good ally means learning more about mental illness and actively listening so you have a better understanding of this person’s experiences. The Canadian Mental Health Association is a great resource for learning more about mental illness and how to offer non-judgmental support for those who may need it.

Avoid pushing unwanted advice
It’s a natural human tendency to want to solve problems, but quite often, folks dealing with mental health concerns just want to feel heard. Unless you’re specifically being asked for advice, avoid interjecting your own opinions, especially in regards to seeking professional help as this is a deeply personal decision.

Be mindful of your language
Discriminatory or insensitive language can be harmful, even if it’s completely unintentional. Saying that you’re having a manic day, that you’re soooo OCD about that one thing, or you have PTSD from that client interaction, diminishes the lived experiences of people who do have mental health concerns. Instead, try saying that you’re having a really busy day, that you’re very particular about that one thing, and that client interaction left you anxious. Flex that vocabulary!

We know that an annual campaign to bring up mental health doesn’t do nearly enough to help the millions of North Americans living with mental illness, and that the Let’s Talk rallying cry is controversial at best; however, we see this as one of many opportunities throughout the year to remind our team that we’re here, and we hear you. Let’s continue to talk, all 365 days.

What mental health initiatives do you have at your company? What else can organizations do to better support folks living with mental illness? We’d love to hear from you on Twitter, in the comments, or you can email us.

✌️ Versett exists to inspire and enable organizations to build and operate digital products. If you like this post, you’d love working with us. See where you’d fit in at https://versett.com/

Why We Care About Mental Health in the Workplace was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

But before you jump down, I hope you consider reviewing this article because ejecting can introduce much more complexity to your project than you might anticipate. Before you commit to your irreversible decision to eject, let me propose a few alternatives.

Why are you ejecting?

There are 3 primary reasons why someone might choose to eject and each reason has either drawbacks or alternatives that should first be investigated.

• “I can manage the build on my own” or “I want full control over my project.”
• “Create-React-App is missing a feature that I need, so I’m going to add it myself.”
• “I’m curious about the build process and want to learn how it works.”

“I can manage the build on my own” or “I want full control over my project”

I’ll admit that the first CRA project I created, I immediately ejected. My naïve assumption was that managing my own build process is something experts did and I assumed I was experienced enough to handle it.

“I’m a good programmer, I can manage my own build tools, I just need a headstart from Create-React-App.”

In reality, experts do everything they can to avoid additional configuration, tools, and code. Before you eject, ask yourself, “Do I want to build something using React or do I want to fight with picky build tools when things stop working?”

Don’t eject until you have a specific reason to do so. If you feel that you have a good reason to eject at a later date, circle back to this article and reevaluate your position. Ejecting is a one-way process and makes your configuration more complex; why burn that bridge before you’ve even used it?

If you’re being thoughtful enough to learn more about ejecting before jumping in, also be thoughtful enough to consider that CRA’s “sane defaults” might work for you, at least for now.

“Create-React-App is missing a feature that I need, so I’m going to add it myself”

This is a great reason to eject. It’s the reason most people do so. However, before you eject, take the time to ensure you aren’t making extra work for yourself or repeating the work someone else has done previously.

Is this something the Create-React-App team has already discussed?

There are thousands of issues filed in the Create-React-App repo, and chances are someone has already addressed your concern. Explore the existing discussions around the topic; you might find a solution or alternative already exists. If it hasn’t been discussed yet, consider filing an issue or making a PR. Thoughtful input is always appreciated.

Has someone built this already?

A nice feature of the CRA sub-package react-scripts is that it can easily be forked and modified. The resulting forked configuration can then be used by your project. Try exploring some existing forks of react-scripts to see if they include the features you want, but without having the maintenance burden of managing your own configuration files. React-super-scripts is an example of one alternative that includes decorators, babel stage-0 features, CSS, SASS, and LESS modules:

shrynx/react-super-scripts

Do you really need this feature?

Before you dive into editing configuration files, you should ask yourself two important questions:

• How much value will be added by making this change?
• Does the value outweigh the introduced cognitive burden of managing the build process?

You’ll be adding thousands of lines of complex code for building and testing, which you will then need to learn in order to properly update, test, and debug your build. By ejecting, you’re taking on the responsibility of updating code that you might not fully understand. If your build breaks, the CRA team will be unable to support your custom configuration. If you have a development team, do you trust they will also adequately understand the changes they’re making to the build process to ensure its stability?

If you or your team do not have a strong understanding of the existing build tools already, “just adding one feature” is likely more difficult than it sounds.

Are you just adding a couple small tweaks to the CRA configuration?

There are a couple of ways to edit your configuration without ejecting. Unlike ejecting, these options are easy to back out of if necessary. React-app-rewired is one of the most popular approaches. Additionally, customize-cra is a package built on top of react-app-rewired with support for version 2 of CRA.

• timarney/react-app-rewired
• arackaf/customize-cra

Version 2 of CRA introduced babel-macros, which are an advanced feature that allows for the inclusion of simple code transformations that run during the build process. It makes configuration files unnecessary, just import your macro into the file you want to transform. Babel-macros have a steeper learning curve than the above tools but are a handy escape-hatch from managing the entire build process yourself.

Are you making significant changes to the CRA configuration?

Okay, I get it, your workflow is a special case and needs specific tooling to reflect it. But before you eject, consider that your use case might be more reusable than you think. Rather than ejecting and maintaining the build process yourself, forking react-scripts allows you to make changes while also reusing it on other similar projects.

Allowing others to use and contribute to your build process is good for your code’s stability and maturity. Forking is encouraged by the CRA team, and easy to set up. Auth0 wrote a great instruction guide for how to fork react-scripts.

“I’m curious about the build process and want to learn how it works”

Great reason! After you’ve set up a new CRA project to your liking, use the command at the bottom of this article to eject it. When ejecting, you will gain access to the code from the react-scripts package. The same code can also be found on the CRA Github repo if you want to do some exploration before ejecting. The CRA repo also contains several other packages which you might also find interesting to investigate.

Don’t be discouraged if you wind up confused or lost. Understanding how CRA works is a daunting task given its size, maturity, and complexity. If you need help, Stack Overflow is a good place to ask questions if you need help with specific blocks of code. Many of the project’s contributors are active on Twitter and could also provide some insights into higher-level details.

Ejecting

There’s nothing wrong with ejecting — there’s a reason it was built into CRA. There are workarounds and escape-hatches that are worth exploring, but for some cases, they’re just not enough.

Before you eject, heed this warning from the docs:

This is a one-way operation. Once you eject, you can’t go back!

If you’ve informed yourself of the alternatives and you still feel that ejecting is the right choice, the process is simple, just a single command. After running the command, you’ll be greeted with two new directories, config and scripts, that you can explore and edit.

If you disagree with my opinions on ejecting in this article, I’d love to hear why. Leave a response below and I’d be happy to discuss my viewpoints. Additionally, If you also have other reasons for or against ejecting, I’d love to hear from you.

✌️ Versett is a product design and engineering studio. If you like this post, you’d love working with us. See where you’d fit in at https://versett.com/

Don’t eject your Create React App was originally published in versett on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

React Today and Tomorrow — Sophie Alpert and Dan Abramov

Why: During the keynote event, Sophie and Dan introduced hooks. This is a potentially game-changing feature that’s worth hearing explained by the core team. If you haven’t already read up about hooks, this talk will provide insight into the future direction of React. Keep in mind, hooks are an alpha release and could change at any time.

90% Cleaner React — Ryan Florence

Why: Sure, hooks are cool, but how do they work in your real-world components? Do they improve our ability to interact with the DOM, perform animations, make fetch requests, and handle complex state changes? Ryan gives a more in-depth understanding of how hooks work and illustrates how your code might change with hooks with thought-provoking demonstrations.

Concurrent Rendering in React — Andrew Clark and Brian Vaughn

Why: The keynote for the second day at React Conf highlighted more exciting new and upcoming features. In this talk, you can find demonstrations of lazy and Suspense from the latest release of React 16.6, as well as discussion about the upcoming concurrent mode and how to best make use of it. Check out this talk to get up to speed with the cutting edge of React so you can start using it as soon as it’s stable.

Moving to Suspense — Jared Palmer

Why: If you haven’t seen Dan Abramov’s talk on React Suspense, that is valuable prerequisite to watch before this talk. Jared goes into more detail about how you could convert an existing app to start using Suspense and the benefits it brings. During his talk, he will show you how to get started on adding loading states to your modules and assets with the latest React release.

Playing with Polyhedra Creating Beauty from Obsession — Nat Alison

Why: Feel inspired by Nat’s story about how she wanted to share her passion of polyhedra with the world. Nat leveraged her knowledge of React and other web technologies to share her enthusiasm. While you could check out the project before the talk, I would recommend waiting until you see her explanation of it first.

React for Social Change — Rodrigo Quezada

Why: Rodrigo tells his story about how they used React and machine learning to help solve the public transit problem in Mexico City. This talk will inspire you to be the change you want to see in the world by using the technology you might already know. The app Rodrigo and his team built helps to simplify the job of bus dispatchers, which in turn allows people all over Mexico City to get to their destinations faster.

SVG Illustrations as React Components — Elizabet Oliveira

Why: SVGs are essential tools that allow us to create simple and elegant user interfaces and experiences. They enable us to create and edit scalable symbols to handle any screen size in a performant way, but they can become tricky to maintain outside of the context of React. This lighting talk shows how to transform SVGs into React components so they can be easily reused and transformed.

Let React speak your language — Tomáš Ehrlich

Why: The world is not a simple place and so it’s inevitable that our code can’t always be simple either. If you’re building an application for international users, it’s important to recognize the importance of not only translations but also localization, and Tomáš shows how to handle them while avoiding introducing unnecessary complexity.

Lightning talk — What’s new in Create React App — Joe Haddad

Why: Create React App 2.0 and 2.1 were recently released with support for a plethora of new tools and ways to develop. TypeScript is one of the biggest new features, alongside Sass, Babel 7, Webpack 4, and more. If these tools seem like they’re in your wheelhouse, watch this talk to learn about getting started with Create React App 2.x on your next project.

Lightning Talk — Components as Units of Work — Bryce Kallow

Why: Bryce’s talk gives a new perspective on how to write React components, and explains why components don’t necessarily need to render anything at all. React’s existing lifecycle hooks are great for identifying when your application has changed, and how to appropriately handle those situations in a component-ized way.

Lightning Talk — Better living through Git Hooks — Leta Keane

Why: (Hopefully) you might already use source control on your React projects. Leta explains how you can use git hooks to keep your codebase clean and running smoothly. She explains the different hooks that exist and potential uses within your React projects.

Lightning Talk — Context in React — Sophie Shoemaker

Why: Not using context yet? Afraid to drop your tried and true Redux setup because the context API is new and mysterious? This lightning talk will introduce context, and explain where and when to use it. Sophie may not convince you to drop Redux, but hopefully she can convince you to see why you might not need it.

Lightning Talk — An Effective Code Review — Donavon West

Why: Code reviews can be daunting and frustrating for the individual being reviewed, but the same can be said for the reviewer. A poor review could undermine the trust and open communication of the team. This lightning talk gives five tips on how to perform an effective review without sounding rude and to achieve the best possible result for the reviewed, reviewer, and the rest of the team.

If you like what you’ve seen and want more, take a look at the rest of the talks here and post a response to below to let me know if we missed any talks worth highlighting.

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